


Over Coffee And Cigarettes

by missjo



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 11:31:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3690603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missjo/pseuds/missjo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas and Jimmy get to know each other after a very drunken one night stand. No smut this go ‘round.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over Coffee And Cigarettes

> _(339): i don't remember it, but i know we had sex because my stuffed animals were facing the wall._

Jimmy groaned and rolled over onto the pillow beside him. It smelled like cologne. More to the point, it smelled like cologne that wasn’t  _his_. He opened his eyes with a grimace to find the other side of his bed empty. Relief flooded through him until he realized something rather important was missing and his stomach bottomed out.

He sat up and looked around the room blearily. He found his teddy bear where it had obviously been tossed the night before. It was sitting with its back to Jimmy as if in response to this betrayal.

Jimmy gulped. He had brought someone home with him, then. A man by the looks of it.

Jimmy’s stomach churned with a mix of anxiety and alcohol.

Again. He had brought home a man  _again_.

He flopped back on the bed with a groan and covered his face with the spare pillow. The foreign cologne made his skin tingle. His prick twitched attentively as it brought back blurry memories of skin on skin and the mind blowing pleasure of the night before.

The door to his bedroom opened and Jimmy froze in humiliation. He slowly lifted the pillow from his face. The most handsome man he had ever seen was standing in the doorway with two steaming mugs in hand.

As Jimmy looked him over he had to commend his drunken self for good taste. The man was tall and broad shouldered with slightly ruffled jet black hair contrasting against his pale skin. His high cheekbones and sharp grey eyes paired with his red kissed mouth made his face almost too beautiful to look at straight on. Jimmy found himself blushing under the intensity of his gaze.

“There were nothing in your kitchen but I managed some coffee, if y’like,” the man said.

Jimmy bit his lip and sat up, desperately searching for the man’s name. “Er, thanks--”

“Thomas,” the man supplied for him with a dip of his head. “Thomas Barrow.”

Jimmy winced. His head felt ready to explode any minute. “Right. Jimmy Kent,” he replied and took the mug offered to him. By the twitch at the corner of Thomas’s mouth he could only assume he had remembered his name. He swallowed down the guilt.

Thomas sat delicately on the edge of Jimmy’s bed, leaving as wide a berth between them as he could. This close Jimmy could see the hint of dark chest hair along the collar of his undershirt. He swallowed. Thomas sipped his coffee, seemingly unaware of Jimmy’s staring.

“D’you mind if I smoke in here?”

Jimmy shrugged a shoulder and blew on his coffee. Thomas dug in his trouser pocket for his box of cigarettes and a lighter.

“So what’s the deal with the bear?” Thomas asked with a smirk. He tapped out a cigarette and put it between his lips.

Jimmy focused on his coffee mug. “It were my mother’s,” he said before he could stop himself. Thomas arched a brow and lit the cigarette with his lighter. “She gave him to me when she got sick. She died some years ago and it’s all I have left of her now.”

The smirk disappeared from Thomas’s face before he took his first drag. Jimmy had never seen anything so obscene as the way his cheeks sunk in around that cigarette. It made his mouth feel dry and his cheeks hot. He cleared his throat.

“It’s just-- it’s not a big  _deal_  or anything,” he said with a shrug, trying to play it off.

“Of course it isn’t,” Thomas replied, his voice surprisingly soft. His steel grey eyes searched every inch of Jimmy’s face. Jimmy stared back.

“Can I steal a smoke?” he asked, his voice rough.

Thomas nodded and pulled out another cigarette. He lit it with his own and handed it over to Jimmy. Their fingers brushed as he took it. He felt the touch vibrate up along his arm and pulled away quickly, sinking back against the backboard.

They smoked in silence. Jimmy dug an ashtray out from under his bedside table and placed it on the mattress between them which Thomas ashed into neatly.

“What brought you out last night?” Thomas asked, breaking the silence. “Y’were too pissed by the time you approached me at the bar for me t’ask.”

Jimmy watched as his cigarette burned down. “Let’s just say my last romantic endeavor ended… badly,” he replied cryptically, not really wanting to tell Thomas of how Ivy had found him in bed with a man he had brought home from a bar and the mess that had rightly followed. “I needed to blow off some steam. You?”

“I weren’t nearly so pissed as you,” Thomas informed him with a gesture of his cigarette. “I were meant to be meeting up with a blind date a friend had set up for me. Turns out it were a laugh and my friend wasn’t so much my friend, in the end. So when a gorgeous guy like you showed up I jumped at it, even though I usually don’t try to pull someone who’s had so much to drink.”

Jimmy blushed at the compliment, though he wasn’t sure why; plenty of people had thought him gorgeous before. He found himself wishing he remembered more details of their evening.

“I’m sure I were perfectly charming,” he said with a sniff and ashed his cigarette.

Thomas gave him a grin that made his heart skip a beat. “Y’weren’t so bad,” he admitted and took a final sip of his coffee. He glanced at his watch. “I should be going.”

“Wha--” Jimmy watched with wide eyes as Thomas stood and placed his mug on the table.

Thomas slipped on his shirt and buttoned it up quickly. Then he turned to give Jimmy another one of those disarming smiles. “It were nice to meet you, Jimmy, perhaps we can do it again sometime. Sober.”

Jimmy was tempted to play this whole thing off, to not even reply, to let this man walk away just like the last, to pretend he would forget him with time. He knew it was cowardice.

“I’d like that. Thomas.” He gave him a weak smile and gripped his mug tightly.

Thomas’s mouth fell open in surprise. “Brilliant,” he replied with a surprisingly shy duck of his head. He pressed a quick, light kiss against Jimmy’s forehead. “I’ll see you later then.”

Jimmy nodded. He watched Thomas shut the bedroom door behind him and listened for the front door to shut as well before sliding back down under the covers. He put out his cigarette and curled back up in his bed with the spare pillow in his arms so he could breathe in the leftover scent of him as he slept.

And if later that morning, when Jimmy finally managed to stumble his way into his kitchen, his heart skipped a beat at the note Thomas had left with his number scribbled in the corner, well, that was his little secret.


End file.
